TruthXchangehttp://truthxchange.com
One Truth. One LieThu, 08 Mar 2018 20:26:28 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4Gunning for Goryhttp://truthxchange.com/2018/03/7794/
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 19:27:58 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7794Claiming that guns are the cause of violence merely shows the vacuous logic and moral ineptitude of contemporary Western thinking in its attempt to silence a genuine sense of good and evil and falsely vilify the opposition. It is “the heart [that] is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I […]

]]>Claiming that guns are the cause of violence merely shows the vacuous logic and moral ineptitude of contemporary Western thinking in its attempt to silence a genuine sense of good and evil and falsely vilify the opposition. It is “the heart [that] is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17:9–10).

Gunning for Gory

Identifying the physical tools used in the high school mass murder (guns) as the cause of those murders is not logical. People cause crimes. Those who nurse evil, hateful thoughts will use all manner of physical means to realize their intentions—guns, bombs, fire, knives, automobiles or bare fists. Given the rationale offered on the school shootings, it is peculiar that we have not yet heard a clamoring demand to ban automobiles. A Home Depot rental truck was the weapon of choice for Sayfullo Saipov, who ran down eight people in lower Manhattan in November, 2017. Or knives. How many knife stabbings will it take before someone suggests banning all knives?

Such an argument only hides the real problem: the moral and social bankruptcy that progressive thinking has created in contemporary Western society.[1] By opposing guns, some believe they are showing the highest moral concern. But the argument is a façade—fake morality—that reveals an utter paucity of true moral reasoning. The public, very political charade works like this:

Make as much noise as possible at the time of the event, screaming against heartless pro-gun lobbies or appeals to the second amendment;

Call for the “murder” of NRA officials;

Sit back with a clear conscience and enjoy the emotion of an election win;

Live with the collapse of the Constitution;

Enjoy socialism in America.

America’s gun culture is more than two hundred years old, and guns have not changed drastically in the last one hundred years. What has changed is the culture. Its moral impotency perhaps affects children more than anyone else. Many kids now grow up without a father, without a nuclear family, without ties to our culture’s Judeo-Christian roots, and without any respect for authority. The Bible is mocked. Pornography and sexual deviance are ho-hum. With the flick of a switch or a tap of a button, children access riveting video games that glorify sex and violence. America suffers from a spiritual crisis, not a gun crisis. We are reaping the fruits of a post-Christian, amoral culture—one enthusiastically endorsed by baby boomers and their children. Without a moral and spiritual revival, America’s children will continue to die in a gigantic, leftist, social experiment that has soared on the magical coat-tails of non-binary spirituality in which (like pagan cultures everywhere) we bring together the opposites of good and evil. Is it any wonder that our children fail to recognize real evil, final consequences or the ultimate Law-Giver?

What was it that stopped Nikolas Cruz, the Florida high-school murderer, from getting the help he needed? We seem incapable of the real moral and spiritual work of counseling disturbed people. What was it that stopped school personnel, local police, the FBI, or even neighbors from stopping Cruz in his tracks? Moral incompetence? Fear of engaging in politically-correct interference? We are morally ossified.

In January, 2018, Tnuza J. Hassan was arrested for setting eight fires in seven buildings at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Allegedly, this 19-year-old female jihadist had previously told FBI agents that she wanted to join al-Qaida and marry a fighter, and that she might even wear a suicide belt.” (See The Associated Press (AP) report on USNews.com.) “She also said she was angry at U.S. military actions overseas and admitted that she tried to encourage others to ‘join the jihad in fighting.’” These admissions were apparently not enough for the FBI to detain or arrest her. Upon her release, she went through with her terrorist plans. There were no guns. She set eight fires.

The problem is neither guns nor fire, but a morally dysfunctional, post-Christian West, unchecked by moral wisdom. In an interview with Ellen de Generis, Oprah joyfully and self-righteously announced that she will donate $500,000, joining with other progressives like George and Amal Clooney, Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, to support the up-coming March for Our Lives demonstration. Students “will take to the streets of Washington, D.C. to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that gun violence and mass shootings cease.”

Claiming that guns are the cause of violence merely shows the vacuous logic and moral ineptitude of contemporary Western thinking in its attempt to silence a genuine sense of good and evil and falsely vilify the opposition. It is “the heart [that] is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17:9–10). The recently-deceased, passionate gospel man, Billy Graham, taught this to the world for seven decades. Only if we honor the God of Scripture and call out to his son Jesus for forgiveness and mercy will we find relief from our own wickedness. God does not save us from guns, fire and knives, but from total moral disintegration in this world and from the eternal results of our present violence in the world to come.

[1] You’ll find this article stimulating, as it attributes mass shootings to liberalism, not to guns.

]]>Jordan Peterson, Jung, and Hope for the Faint-Heartedhttp://truthxchange.com/2018/02/peterson-jung-hope/
Thu, 22 Feb 2018 12:18:45 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7776Jordan Peterson seems to be a genuine seeker after truth, with an insatiable appetite to put the world together in a coherent worldview. Much of what he says is very “Christian friendly,” but his coherence breaks down when he finds inspiration in Carl Jung, one of the most powerful creators of today’s post-Christian, neo-pagan culture. […]

]]>Jordan Peterson seems to be a genuine seeker after truth, with an insatiable appetite to put the world together in a coherent worldview. Much of what he says is very “Christian friendly,” but his coherence breaks down when he finds inspiration in Carl Jung, one of the most powerful creators of today’s post-Christian, neo-pagan culture. Jung has been described as “the father of Neo-Gnosticism and the New Age Movement.” Jung himself stated: “The possibility of a comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology.” Gnosticism, as you may know, was the great apostasy opposed by the early Church Fathers. According to Jung, you could not call yourself a Jungian without being a Gnostic. According to the Fathers, you could not be a Gnostic and a call yourself a Christian.

In our angry, divided, and polemical society, young Christians, eager for measured peace, encourage us to accept the good things our society brings. Do we always have to see culture wars? This is a laudable desire. Nevertheless, Christians enamored of modern culture run the risk of ignoring its underlying anti-Christian ideology and diluting the unique truth of the Gospel.

Some have so adopted cultural norms that they are no longer even Christian. In my recent review of Brian McLaren’s The Great Spiritual Migration I quoted his statement that God must no longer be understood as the separate “omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent” (GSM 92) Creator and cosmic Ruler, and that Christianity must lose its monotheistic notions to embrace a “grander, inclusive [non-dualistic] God who demonstrates solidarity with all” (GSM 101). Once identifying as an evangelical, McLaren has followed our contemporary all-religions-are-one culture right out the door of Christianity: “Religions…will not survive if we believe that our religion is the only one true religion” (GSM 102). His version of Christianity is just an echo of a progressive social justice gospel. It defines itself as pure from anti-Semitism, rejection of women, racism and religious bigotry. The church should work to heal climate change by installing “solar panels” (GSM 172−3) or a “community garden” (GSM 173)—for “the common good” (GSM 168). I have solar panels on my house, but I don’t quite see it as mandatory for eternal salvation. With little exaggeration, McLaren’s “migration” could be called The Great Spiritual Apostasy.

John Seel’s book, The New Copernicans has a creative strategy to save the evangelical church: the Millennials’ love of the culture’s intuitive, “right brain” thinking, and its affection for pagan religious mysticism will deliver us from dead, “left-brain” theology. But we must not forget that Millennials have lived in the newly-minted version of pagan thinking that invaded the West in the Sixties. Do they now hold the key to spiritual revival? Should they be given authority to redefine genuine Christianity, as Seel believes? Not if the pagan, mystical culture serves as their norm for understanding biblical wisdom.

Young evangelicals eager for a truce in the culture wars have a new hero: Jordan Peterson, a charming, brilliant and entertaining Canadian professor with a myriad of fascinating things to say. I have listened to a good many of his lectures myself and stand in admiration of his ability to lecture for hours without notes, keeping his audiences in rapt attention. But I wish to issue a warning. Peterson’s fresh view of “faith” involves admiration of (at least) one dangerous thinker—Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist (d. 1961).

True, everyone is made in God’s image and we can learn things from unbelievers! Nevertheless, a great ideological conflict exists between biblical truth and the anti-Christian thinking of our culture. A naïve embrace of the spiritual usefulness of Carl Jung, [1] may give you a reputation of open-mindedness and sophistication. But you may also be in danger of unwitting and deep theological compromise.

Jordan Peterson seems to be a genuine seeker after truth, with an insatiable appetite to put the world together in a coherent worldview. Much of what he says is very “Christian friendly,” but his coherence breaks down when he finds inspiration in Carl Jung, one of the most powerful creators of today’s post-Christian, neo-pagan culture. Jung has been described as “the father of Neo-Gnosticism and the New Age Movement.”[2] Jung himself stated: “The possibility of a comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology.”[3] Gnosticism, as you may know, was the great apostasy opposed by the early Church Fathers. According to Jung, you could not call yourself a Jungian without being a Gnostic. According to the Fathers, you could not be a Gnostic and a call yourself a Christian.

Peterson attracts young Christians because he boldly and publicly states (against the politically-correct orthodoxy of the academic Left) that there is objective truth, that sex is not for hooking up, that “marriage vows are sacred,” and that children are a blessing. He holds that good and evil are real, and that the fabric of your life is woven with choices for one or the other,” as one perceptive blogger notes.

Peterson is not a theologian and appreciates the Bible for its “mythological truths” in the same way he appreciates “mythological truths” from other religions and traditions. In evaluating his understanding of mythology, he lacks the biblical criterion of the fundamental Creator/creature distinction, what we call at truthXchange Oneism or Twoism. Peterson admires the brilliant Jung because he broke with the rationalist Freud and normalized the “spiritual” for therapy in the twentieth century. Churches that immediately embraced Jung have lost whatever Christian faith they may have had. The ex-Jungian, Jeffrey Satinover, dryly comments that “in the United States, the Episcopal Church has more or less become a branch of Jungian psychology, theologically and liturgically.”[4]

Appreciation of Jung, whether past or present, fails to see a blinding reality: paganism can take the form of rationalistic atheism (Freudianism in particular) but it can also take the form of an extremely powerful occult mythology (Jungianism). This is the mistake Seel makes in The New Copernicans.[5] He believes that truth can only be mystical and is, therefore, glad for the advent of mystical paganism in Western culture, which serves as an “on-ramp” to genuine faith. As I said in my review[6] “…both pagan mysticism and atheistic rationalism are pagan systems, …atheistic paganism denies God’s existence and worships the human mind; ‘spiritual’ paganism denies the Creator, but worships nature and the self as divine…This latter [pagan mythological] way is the typical way God is denied throughout the Bible, where we read: ‘For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens’” (Ps 96:5).

Naturally, Jordan Peterson, as a seeking, creative, non-Christian therapist, can only see the resurrection of Christ as symbolism and uses dreams as a way of healing. Thus he finds Jung’s uniquely creative search for mythological archetypes stunning, as a means of psychological health. Jung’s search included the use (even in his own family) of many elements of the occult and diabolical parapsychological movements current in Europe at the time. Peterson probably fails to see the radical theological implications of Jung’s commitment to the paranormal spiritism of his background and to the Gnostic myth of human divinity. This commitment forces Jung to reject the Twoist God of Scripture and the entire moral system of the Bible.

Jung preferred to worship the Gnostic god, Abraxas, half-man, half-beast, with a higher status than the Christian God or Satan. Abraxas, for Jung, is “the hermaphrodite of the earliest beginning… the lord of toads and frogs… abundance that seeketh union with emptiness.”[7] Jung goes on: “Abraxas begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness in the same word and in the same act. Wherefore is Abraxas terrible.”[8] While Peterson’s goal is genuine goodness and the rejection of “obvious” malevolence, Jung’s was to “join the opposites.” This would solve the problem of guilt, not through the atoning work of God the Son on the cross but through a delusion of self-justifying Oneism.

Satinover rightfully notes about Jung’s Gnosticism that “Whatever the system, and however the different stages are purportedly marked, the ultimate aim, the innermost circle of all Gnostic systems, is a mystical vision of the union of good and evil.”[9] So the utopia our culture has been conditioned to envision, thanks in large part to Jung, is built on a pure fantasy of non-binary moral relativism that allows us free rein for our sexual instincts. Such was the way of Jung’s life, with his wife, a number of affairs and a long-term mistress. Unlike Peterson, who is often realistically conservative in his views, expressing devastating critiques of Marxism and encouraging faithfulness in marriage, Jung was an unrepentant libertine. Jeffrey Satinover says: “The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution [of the Sixties] is rooted in an outlook of which [Jung] is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.”[10]

In 1997 Jung’s secular biographer, Richard Noll, recognizing the vast influence of Jung in the modern world, sought to find a figure in history whose effect would correspond to the importance of Jung. He chose the most notable example of a Christian apostate:

I have come to the conclusion that, as an individual, Jung ranks with the Roman emperor, Julian “the Apostate,” as one who significantly undermined orthodox Christianity and restored the polytheism of the Hellenistic world in Western civilization…For a variety of historical and technological factors—modern mass media being the most important—Jung has succeeded where Julian failed…[the result is that] the patriarchal monotheism of the orthodox Judeo-Christian faiths has all but collapsed, and filling the void, we find Protestants, Catholics and Jews adopting alternative, syncretistic belief systems that often belie a basis in Jungian “psychological” theories.[11]

If a non-believing biographer can see this, then we must ask if Carl Jung, who has rejected Christianity, is the one to whom evangelicals should naively turn for Christian wisdom. Jung’s endless search for truth ultimately led him into the Lie. We pray that Peterson, and those who follow him, will finally see and know the Truth.

]]>The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Churchhttp://truthxchange.com/2018/02/copernicans/
Tue, 13 Feb 2018 21:56:36 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7750Recognizing the loss of many Millennials (18–30 year olds) from evangelical churches, The New Copernicans proposes a solution that will return them to the pews. The author and entrepreneur, John Seel, notes important factors in the contemporary scene: the diminishment of secular humanism; the growth of spiritual practices; the exodus of young people from church; […]

]]>Recognizing the loss of many Millennials (18–30 year olds) from evangelical churches, The New Copernicans proposes a solution that will return them to the pews. The author and entrepreneur, John Seel, notes important factors in the contemporary scene: the diminishment of secular humanism; the growth of spiritual practices; the exodus of young people from church; and the consensus that we are in “the post secular age.” Seel’s insights are correct, but they do not make his solution correct; indeed, it is woefully wrong and insidiously dangerous.

Seel posits that Millennials (“the New Copernicans,” as he calls them) are not only the problem but also the solution. Copernicus (1473–1543) courageously stood alone against church authorities, maintaining that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of our universe. For Seel, Millennials are “Copernican” by standing tall and speaking truth to church authorities. The church’s error? It has depended far too long on “left-brain,” 18th century enlightenment rationalism instead of the “right-brain” intuition and feeling of contemporary mystics.

I find it curious that Seel creates a parallel between mystical Millennials and Copernicus, an intellectual polymath and polyglot genius whose left-brain brilliance brought the world into contact with the outer universe. If left-brain is such a problem, why is Copernicus used as an icon? Leaving aside this logical conundrum, we see that Seel faults the evangelical church for trusting “left brain” worldview apologetics to defend the “truth” of Christianity against the modern atheistic denial of God. The Millennials have understood, he reasons (yes, he uses his own left brain), that faith in doctrine and reason will get us nowhere.

Seel’s historical construction is false. At the Reformation, long before the outbreak of eighteenth-century Enlightenment humanism, the church was committed to left-brain doctrinal discourse in the production of extended confessions of faith. This was equally true in the church’s earlier history, when the universal creeds were written.

On the basis of incorrect historical analysis, Seel identifies doctrinal evangelicalism as the great modern failure of Christianity. He insists, along with mystics of every hue, that religious truth must always be absorbed via “right-brain” emotive “intuition,” laced with heavy doses of “authentic” doubt and insecurity. He does not reckon that God gave us two sides of the brain to work in harmony and that critical thinking is no less important than emotional attachment. Learning to know and love God involves both intelligence/reasoning and emotion/intuition. The only support Seel offers to his thesis that the mystico-skeptical approach to divine truth is the only way today’s church can witness to Jesus, is his observation that Millennials function intuitively. Seel blithely proffers the keys of the kingdom into the grasp of Millennial instinct, trained as it was by the pagan thinking that has flooded the West since the 1960s. Millennials now define genuine Christianity.

The New Copernicans is a dangerous book. Seel’s analysis of the spiritual condition of the church is misleading and self-serving; behind this flattering image of the Millennials as “Copernican” stalwarts, opposing the powers-that-be, stands Seel himself, a spiritual man of many doubts. He appoints himself as a 60-year-old spokesman for and defender of much-maligned Millennials. His warm feelings about his relationship with “Jesus” convince him that he can speak of himself as an evangelical, though he never once cites with approval any recognized evangelical leader. His “prophets of the New Copernican sensibility” (NC 69) are Rachel Held Evans, Frankie Schaeffer, Pete Enns (NC 69, 105), Jen Hatmaker (NC 196), and “Queer Christians” (NC 196), who reflect a new “progressive” view of Christianity. All these could be fairly described as adopting various levels of Christian apostasy. Certainly they all reject or seriously weaken the very basis of evangelical faith: the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. The faith they share is not evangelical Christianity, but a brutal honesty about their lack or loss of faith. According to Seel, this authenticity, which Millennials love, is their true path back to the fold. Thus Frank Schaeffer, Francis Schaeffer’s son, is lauded because he writes, “Why I Am an Atheist Who Also Believes in God,” a book spawned by radical doubt and designed for wandering young evangelicals.

Seel graduated from Covenant Seminary, an orthodox Christian seminary associated with the Presbyterian Church in America. Apparently things did not go too well for him, since he rejects seminary education as far too “left brain.” Seel later worked for the Templeton Foundation and recognizes the billionaire investor, Sir John Templeton’s deep influence upon him (NC 103). “Right-brained” Sir John eschewed dogma, declaring that little can be known about the divine through scripture. Instead, he espoused a doubting, “humble approach” to theology that remains open to the benefits and values of other faiths, including those of Hinduism and the Unity School of Christianity,

Out of the blue, Seel willingly and perceptively recognizes that “neo-paganism is the spiritual voice of popular culture”—a voice that has mesmerized the Millennials. This is the “post-secular age.” Indeed, he quotes cultural critic, Camille Paglia who observes: “We’ve returned to the age of polytheism” (NC 115). Surprisingly, Seel approves Eastern mystical techniques, the search for “magic” (NC 155), and even the scandalous celebrations of Burning Man (NC 90–94). Why? Because they are positive, right-brain “on ramps” for Millennials to find their way back to true Christianity. To reach Millennials, he tells us, the evangelical church needs people like the Roman Catholic mystic and Oneist, Richard Rohr (NC 101), or the Buddhist Dalai Lama (NC 106). He actually calls on the church “to celebrate and appreciate this neo-pagan cultural turn” (NC 116).

Such an approach is seriously irresponsible. The godless sexual and spiritual ideology that overran the West after the Sixties Cultural Revolution was (as the once radical, feminist, Marxist historian, Elizabeth Fox Genovese put it) a “catastrophic cultural transformation.” The mores and philosophy of that transformation were normalized for the following generations by Hollywood and the academic left. Seel now recommends such thinking as the church’s path forward. By failing to recognize the deadly danger of pagan mysticism, Seel risks sealing the fate of countless Millennials caught up in a form of false spirituality that the Bible thunderously denounces.

Both pagan mysticism and atheistic rationalism are pagan systems, of course. They are both “Oneist” systems that deny God the Creator, “who is blessed forever” (Rom 1:25) and worship the creation itself. Oneist rebellion can take two forms. 1. Atheistic paganism, which denies the existence of God the Creator and worships the human mind; 2. Spiritual paganism, which denies God the Creator by equating divinity withnature and the self. True worship respects the difference between God and his creation and is thus a “Twoist” system. God is distinct from his creation and worthy of worship, which, by implication, Seel denies, since he rejects the binary (NC xix, 76). Interestingly, it is most often the “spiritual” version of paganism that is denounced throughout Scripture: For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens (Ps 96:5); They are turned back and utterly put to shame, who trust in carved idols, who say to metal images, “You are our gods” (Isa 42:17–18). Pagan idolatry is not a biblical “on-ramp” to true faith. It is an off-ramp to hell, detestable and an “utter shame.” Either form of rebellion—rational or mystical—denies the transcendent God who is to be blessed forever.

I pray that eager, seeking Millennials will not give ear to John Seel, but will rather hear, understand and believe what the Apostle Paul says, as he reveals to us the mystery of the Gospel and the person of Christ, on which a true Christian feasts with both sides of the brain:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities– all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Col. 1:13–20)

]]>Meditation and the Art of Consciousness Hackinghttp://truthxchange.com/2018/02/meditation-art-consciousness-hacking/
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 01:40:58 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7743I recently stumbled across the term “consciousness hacking” on a website of that name. The term is an apt description of a shift in Western consciousness caused by the ubiquitous influence of Eastern meditation, now considered a scientific technology of consciousness. The Consciousness Hacking website is a hub for those who hope, through an interface […]

]]>I recently stumbled across the term “consciousness hacking” on a website of that name. The term is an apt description of a shift in Western consciousness caused by the ubiquitous influence of Eastern meditation, now considered a scientific technology of consciousness. The Consciousness Hacking website is a hub for those who hope, through an interface of science and consciousness, to help humanity evolve toward an age of “individual and collective flourishing.” Employing a variety of scientific technologies and meditative techniques as their hacking tools, this growing community intends to essentially upgrade humanity’s “conscious operating system.” How do they hope to accomplish such a Herculean feat? By training the brain into nonduality, which is a nonjudgmental, meditative grid by which to interpret reality. Believing technologically enhanced meditation will result in worldwide “peace, truth, love [and] enlightenment,” they are enthusiastically coordinating a neurological hack of the global mind. Reality will no longer be interpreted by subject/object distinctions (such as that between the Creator and creation—Twoism), but according to nondual (“not two”) consciousness of the divine within everyone (Oneism). They promise utopia by “democratizing the divine” so that an enlightened, united humanity can finally unlock the mystery of collective divinity (the goal of the Tower of Babel). Thus, techno-spirituality offers redemption by meditation rather than by the blood of Jesus. While the terminology is new, the idea behind it isn’t.

The original consciousness hacker was Satan himself, who urged man to become God by joining the opposites of good and evil. This is exactly what meditation does by suspending thought until a person enters a state of nondual consciousness and no longer perceives the distinction between Creator and creation, male and female, or good and evil. All blurs into One. The spirit behind meditation has long been at work in the West to shift the cultural consciousness from Twoism to Oneism.

Societies generally function according to a dominant cultural consensus—a social operating system based on a widely accepted consciousness of reality. The cultural consciousness of the Christian West once accepted a broad consensus defined by biblical theism and the morality of the Ten Commandments. Even unbelievers lived within the general moral framework of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Recognizing the distinctions between God and nature, men and women, right and wrong, good and evil and heaven and hell was common-place, even in a culture increasingly influenced by Darwinian naturalism. Yet, by the 1960s, a deep cauldron of discontent with the pragmatism and materialism of Modernity (falsely associated with Christianity), reached boiling point as thousands (half a million attended Woodstock) shook off the dust of their Christian heritage and turned to Eastern mysticism. The stone tablets were cast down, fragmenting the cultural consensus. Throngs of Hindu yogis and Buddhist monks rushed into the arms of the welcoming West, bringing exotic and alluring promises of self-realization and world peace. Higher states of meditative consciousness would dissolve subject/object distinctions into the Unitive power of One. Worship shifted from the Creator-Redeemer, who is outside us (Twoism), to divine Eastern consciousness, which comes from within (Oneism). The hacking of our consensual consciousness had begun in earnest!

Nearly sixty years later, we find a movement dubbed “enlightenment engineering,” which uses technology to accelerate and enhance the development of meditative consciousness. One of the leading innovators in this field is Mikey Siegel, the founder of Consciousness Hacking. Siegel’s passion to establish meditative consciousness as a kind of updated “conscious operating system” for humanity, developed from an extraordinary meditation experience after his life had taken an unexpected turn. After leaving MIT with a graduate degree in robotics, Siegel was “living the engineer’s dream,” having landed a coveted position in Silicon Valley. But the career he thought would fulfill him left him instead feeling empty, purposeless and anxious. Disillusioned, he struck out on a “vision quest” to the ashrams of India, where Hindu gurus instructed him in a new kind of consciousness, attained through meditation. In a TEDx talk, Siegel told of his life-changing experience, which occurred on the seventh day of an intensive ten-day, fourteen-hour-a-day meditation retreat. That day’s exercise involved sitting cross-legged on the floor to “focus with non-judgmental awareness on the sensations in [the] body.” After a few hours, Siegel experienced the intense back, knee and leg pain one would expect. But the godmen who are Hindu gurus demand complete submission from those who enter their ashrams, and Siegel had submitted to the command to exercise non-judgmentalism toward all his bodily sensations. “In an instant,” he recounts, “everything changed. The sensations didn’t go away, but somehow, they were okay. There was nothing wrong. There was no bad and there was no good because there was no judgment. Somehow, that part of the brain had shut off [TEDx talk].” The meditative experience had flashed over him as a liberating epiphany opening his mind to the nonduality of Eastern mysticism—the home of his new consciousness. Siegel’s consciousness had just been hacked.

By suspending the judgment of his normally functioning mind and abandoning himself to mental passivity, Siegel experienced the “enlightenment” of a higher state of transcendent consciousness in which neither “good” nor “bad” exists. According to Hinduism, the material world and the realm of distinctions are only an illusion (maya). The goal of meditation is to transcend these illusions until the soul (atman) is realized as god (brahman).

Siegel returned from India on an enthusiastic vision quest to explore meditation as a scientific technology with the capacity “to actually get to the inner root of human suffering, and get to the core of the fear, the greed, the selfishness that starts [in the heart]—that is the cause of so much tragedy on our planet.” Through his experience of nonduality, Siegel came to see meditation as the ultimate savior. “[I]f we think about the way meditation works,” he explains, “it’s not about more information. It’s actually about getting out of the mind and embedded in a non-conceptual present moment experience.” Siegel places absolute faith in meditation, the key to “ultimately change our mind so that we can live in a very different experience of reality.” Siegel’s salvation-by-meditation exchanges the atonement bought for sinners by Christ’s blood (which reconciles us to the God and Father outside us) for an inner state of enlightened consciousness.

Siegel anticipates a “Technological Renaissance” with power to heal the soul, much as medical science heals the body. Says Siegel, “So, in the same way that our understanding of biological science has helped eradicate smallpox from the earth, perhaps our understanding of contemplative [meditative] science can help eradicate the inner causes of human suffering.” He is encouraged by the development of numerous wearable devices that enhance and accelerate meditative consciousness. One such device is the Muse, a “brain sensing headband,” which plays soothing sounds of weather patterns (like gentle rain or a soft breeze) when the mind is in an acceptably meditative state. Should the mind wander into thinking, however, it’s weather “handler” turns threatening, calling it back to the passive state of meditation. Siegel’s similar device, Heartsync, allows up to six participants to synchronize their heart rates through the guided breathing techniques of Eastern meditation. Sensors attached to each participant produce audio and visual stimuli to guide the group into a “synchronized state of calm and balance.” Siegel thus spreads his Oneist gospel of meditation to others by inviting them to share in the nondual consciousness (neither bad nor good exists) that flipped the switch in his own brain in an ashram in India.

There is nothing new in Siegel’s vision for humanity. It is the same vision the serpent imparted to Eve and to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Joining the opposites of good and evil did not lead them to enlightenment and self-realization, as Satan deceitfully promised. Instead, it led and continues to lead the human race into the entwining deception of demonic spirituality, which gives a counterfeit sense of god-consciousness and blinds people to their need of repentance and of trust in the redemptive grace of Jesus Christ. Using technological devices to regulate one’s brain waves and heart rate only serves to strengthen the deception. Mikey Siegel calls followers to look within—“It’s clear that there’s a trend where the attention is shifting from out there to in here”—but Scripture calls us to look outside ourselves to our God and Creator. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can transform our “conscious operating system” from its self-destructive, inward-looking bent to an upward-looking worship that will create in us a clean heart. In Christ Jesus, God in the flesh, we who believe are new creatures, empowered by his Holy Spirit and Scripture to grow in sanctification, to discover our true identities and to enjoy a life set apart for the Gospel. All those who know him will, in unity and diversity, be attuned to the glory of his grace—without a MUSE attached to our heads or a HEARTSYNC to teach us to love one another.

]]>The Nature of Existence: All is One, or All is Two?http://truthxchange.com/2018/01/nature-existence-one-two/
Wed, 24 Jan 2018 16:44:41 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7722This question about existence seems very simple, but human beings can only answer it by faith, since not one of us can stand outside of existence to make an “objective,” all-knowing judgment about the nature of things. We need help. The only possible answers are Oneism or Twoism. Oneism and The Lie Oneism begins with […]

]]>This question about existence seems very simple, but human beings can only answer it by faith, since not one of us can stand outside of existence to make an “objective,” all-knowing judgment about the nature of things. We need help. The only possible answers are Oneism or Twoism.

Oneism and The Lie

Oneism begins with the conviction that human beings are part of nature and that nature, as the origin of all things, is divine. It also assumes that we are all pure and innocent and that evil is just another side of good. These are two essential faith convictions of Oneism. In the Bible’s account of reality, however, we don’t start with a clean slate of beautiful intentions to love our neighbor and our God with all our heart and soul. We begin, instead, with realism about conflict in our world. We understand that a false definition of existence keeps us in willful ignorance of our truly rebellious state. On this false sense of innocence we build a false notion of God.

The Bible speaks of “the lie,” fabricated by the Father of Lies (Satan), who rejected God before the creation of humanity. The Lie Satan brought to us is a refusal to recognize that we, like all created beings, are accountable to God, the transcendent Creator Lord. The Lie calls the Author of life an Arch-Liar, and constructs human religious thinking on the basis of a fundamental misrepresentation of the truth. This false, pagan view of God is a death blow to any genuine wisdom about the ultimate issues of life. Paul says: although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened (v.21). Such darkened hearts lead to a deadly exchange in Romans 1:25: They exchanged the truth about God for the lie, and that of v.18, …[they] suppress the truth by their wickedness. Human beings know God in the depth of their being, but refuse to act in light of such knowledge. But they do act, because they do have a need for spirituality. The knowledge of God is at the core of our being as humans, so if we reject the Creator God, we will make for ourselves another form of the divine. Paul captures this in one profound phrase: they worshiped creation (v.25).

This is worship, not just an intellectual denial. This denial is expressed in three areas: what we believe about who God is, what we believe about spirituality, and what we believe about sexuality [We will develop these latter two issues in forthcoming blogs]. Regarding God, those who worship creation are living in fundamental, generalized rebellion. That rebellion stems from the way we think about God and about his self-revelation in nature and in words. This is why we speak of “theology,” made up of two words: “theos,” (God), and “logy” (logos), that is, words or thinking about God. So we see why Paul says they “exchanged the truth” about God for “the lie.” Something deep goes on in the human mind.

Twoism and The Truth

Christians also must answer questions about human existence, but they start with faith in a God outside the universe, who reveals himself to us in nature, in Jesus and in the Bible. I once attended the Parliament of the World’s Religions, where I heard Robert Mueller (Assistant General Secretary of the United Nations, and a New Age pagan mystic), say: “there is no ‘In the beginning, God created…’ at the UN.” The Bible doesn’t begin by denying the Creator, like Mueller or like so-called “Christian” Gnosticism. It doesn’t even begin with the heart-warming message, “In the beginning Christ died for my sins.” That comes later. Rather, it begins with precisely what the UN denies, a massive, over-arching statement of the origin of our existence: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The Old Testament stakes its reputation on the goodness of creation and on the eternal reality of the Creator, who stands outside the creation as its Maker. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul says the same thing, describing God as he “who. . . gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom 4:17). This is a verse affirming creation ex nihilo, creation from nothing!

A liberal Old Testament scholar of the last century saw the uniqueness of the biblical message announced by Moses in the ancient pagan world of Oneism and observed:

What distinguishes the Genesis account of creation among the many creation stories of the Ancient Near East is that for Genesis there can be only one creator and that all else that is or can be, can never be anything but a creature.[1]

As a liberal, Westermann may not have believed consistently what he wrote about, but he certainly sees the Bible’s message clearly.

When Jesus was asked, What is the first and greatest commandment?, he answered without hesitation:

The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mk. 12:28–31)

Jesus is quoting the SHEMA, which is the essence of Old Testament faith. The Jewish people repeated this foundational confession of Israel in their morning and evening prayer services for thousands of years: Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad. (Apparently, singer Justin Bieber says the Shema before each public performance, which is not a bad place to start!)

This confession expresses the uniqueness of God. God is other than we are, as Twoism requires. We are not God. We are his creatures. God stands behind the amazing reality we call creation.

Even Nobel laureate and atheist Dr. Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) admitted that because it is impossible to give any numerical value to the probability of chance events, the origin of life appears almost as a miracle. The late English astronomer and atheist, Sir Fred Hoyle (who coined the term “big bang”), was even more courageous than Crick, when he said that it is absurd to think that life came about by chance. He calculated that there is not enough time in the fifteen-billion-year-old universe for mere chance to produce all the incredibly complex higher life forms. The amazing cellular order of the universe had to be the result of an external intelligent design, a theory he thought so obvious that he wondered why it was not accepted as self-evident.[2]

My recently deceased friend, R C Sproul, helpfully observed that “The basis of materialistic atheism is the belief that nothing plus time plus chance equals order and complexity.” Atheists have no account of origins, (which they admit), they merely observe physical changes across time, caused as they say by irrational forces, and yet they are faced with an incredibly complicated and intelligent universe and can only open their mouths to speak by presupposing the obvious fact of an intelligent universe. In other words, this is absolute foolishness. [https://juicyecumenism.com/2018/01/17/atheists-remembering-rc-sproul/]

We all stand before the dilemma expressed by Colin Gunton, one of the best British theologians of his generation, who stated:

There are, probably, ultimately only two possible answers to the question of origins, and they recur at different places in all ages: [either] that the universe is the result of creation by a free personal [intelligent] agency, or that in some way or other it creates itself. The two answers are not finally compatible, and require a choice, either between them or an attitude of agnostic refusal to decide.[3]

Both nature and Jesus teach us the emptiness of Oneism. Twoism is the only one that makes sense of such a rich, glorious world, full of beauty, song, language, morals and human beings—the unique image-bearers of a transcendent, loving Father.

]]>The Lessons of Christmas: Incarnation, Not Enlightenmenthttp://truthxchange.com/2017/12/lessons-christmas-incarnation-not-enlightenment/
Fri, 22 Dec 2017 20:16:35 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7676Waiting. I have vivid childhood memories of Christmas Eves spent looking under the Christmas tree, curiously trying to figure out what was inside the carefully wrapped boxes. Was it the toy truck I couldn’t stop talking about? Was it the action figure I spotted at the department store that I just knew I “had” to […]

Waiting. I have vivid childhood memories of Christmas Eves spent looking under the Christmas tree, curiously trying to figure out what was inside the carefully wrapped boxes. Was it the toy truck I couldn’t stop talking about? Was it the action figure I spotted at the department store that I just knew I “had” to have? Were my parents really listening to me when I passionately expressed my longings?

God’s Old Covenant people eagerly waited for a promised gift. Was God really listening to his people when they passionately expressed their longing for deliverance and redemption? During Christmas we celebrate the end of Israel’s waiting, and the arrival of Jesus Christ, the One whose appearing was so monumental that Western civilization has literally split its division of history around the perceived date of his birth.

Unfortunately, our commercializing culture has obscured the truest meaning of this holiday. Even Christians can be affected. Christmas is a season with deep theological implications. Beyond the joy of celebrating mere family get-togethers, the customary exchange of gifts, the delicious food, or even the vague sense of universal peace with all people based on little more than our common humanity–Christmas pushes further.

Christmas is radical. Christmas reminds us that our God gets his hands dirty. The infinite,personal God of the Bible isn’t a force. He punishes the wicked, but he also reconciles the lost. The invisible, immortal, intangible Word of God took on human flesh. By this in-fleshing, this incarnation, God the Son took on a new mode of existence marked by weakness, vulnerability, and mortality.”[1] Jesus did this, in the words of the Nicene Creed (325 AD), “For us and for our salvation.” The birth of Jesus is by far the greatest announcement humanity has ever received.

What Christmas Teaches us about Reality

Oneism, with its denial of the Creator-creature distinction, cannot be squared with the truth of Christmas. It leaves us forever waiting for a redemption that never finally arrives. Behind the holiday spectacles lie powerful Twoist truths. Embracing these truths moves us away from the cosmic confusion of Oneism, and plants us firmly on the unshakable ground of gospel truth. This is because the drama of Christmas addresses the root of our greatest problem, answers our greatest need, and presents the greatest news imaginable.

Lesson 1: Our Problem is Our Love of Sinful Affections, Not a Lack of Self-Awareness

Oneism appears in many forms, but they all insist that there is no true distinction between Creator and creature. Enlightenment is not given to us as a gift by from someone or something outside of ourselves. It comes from an awakening to our truest self, an awareness of the inner spark of the divine that runs through all people. Ignorance of self, not estrangement from God, is the great problem to be overcome, according to Oneism.

In sharp contrast, Twoism teaches us that our problem–the problem for which it was necessary for God himself to get involved–is our estrangement from the Creator due to our sin. The very essence of sin reveals the nature of reality. Theologian Millard J. Erickson summarizes biblical imagery for sin as including “missing the mark, irreligion, transgression, iniquity or lack of integrity, rebellion, treachery, perversion, and abomination.”[2] He likewise defines the essence of sin in terms of sensuality, selfishness, and the displacement of God.[3]

The root of human suffering is not ignorance of our inner divinity. When humanity embraced autonomy, the human and divine relationship was broken. War, injustice, racism, sexism, slavery, manipulation, theft, and sex trafficking are all expressions of the sinful, anti-God impulse. Having turned against our Creator, and therefore against one other–those made in the image of the Creator. We are indeed estranged from ourselves, but not because we just haven’t realized that we are divine. We are estranged because we refuse to acknowledge our creaturehood (Rom. 1:21).

We cannot be our own Christmas heroes. The woes of the world are our own doing. The solution must come from somewhere else. and this brings us to our second Christmas lesson.

Lesson 2: Don’t Look Within, Look to Him

Christmas reveals our greatest need. As D. A. Carson said, if we had needed an economist, entertainer, politician, or doctor, God would have sent one of those to deliver us. Instead, God “perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.”[4]

We don’t need a shaman, a guru, or a yogi. We only do ourselves harm when we seek solutions to the world’s problem from the well of our own resources. We need a prophet to speak truth, a priest to take up our cause with God, and a king to defeat our enemies.

During Christmas we do not lift our gaze to the pinnacle of human spirituality with the hope of finally reaching enlightenment. Christmas is not about good advice. It is good news.

Christmas marks the launching of God’s kingdom and of God’s redemptive deathblow against the powers of sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan. During this time of year, we–like the shepherds of Luke’s Gospel–reflect on the glorious announcement of the arrival of Jesus Christ as king and redeemer. God has come in person. This gospel was the hope of God’s people surrounded by pagan Rome two thousand years ago, and remains the only hope of his people in the re-paganized west today.

So, though we continue to wait, we now wait in hope for the glorious return of the king.

]]>Can You Have Christmas Spirit Without the Christmas Story?http://truthxchange.com/2017/12/can-christmas-spirit-without-christmas-story/
Wed, 20 Dec 2017 18:48:48 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7672“Your drink has been paid for.” The barista spilled a bit of coffee as she explained the random act of kindness, “The car in front of you took care of your order—the driver told me to tell you Merry Christmas!” It was a small gesture, but a strangely meaningful one for me in that moment. “Wow! […]

]]>“Your drink has been paid for.” The barista spilled a bit of coffee as she explained the random act of kindness, “The car in front of you took care of your order—the driver told me to tell you Merry Christmas!” It was a small gesture, but a strangely meaningful one for me in that moment. “Wow! Thank you! Merry Christmas to her and to you also!” The barista’s response stayed with the rest of the day, “You know, it’s sad that such kindness has to be tied to Christmas—as if we can only show mercy and generosity toward one another because of a holiday.”

Surely she was right, can’t we find ways to be more humane toward one another even when Bing Crosby isn’t playing on the radio every half hour? But I also had doubts, doubts that I nursed throughout the day. Sure, one can be charitable and kind while totally rejecting the Christmas message, we all know people like that. Yet, are such acts intelligible in what Peter Jones calls a “Oneist” view of the world? That is, if there is no “Other,” no God distinct from his creation, do our graceful acts make sense? I don’t think so, and neither do many of the sharpest Oneist thinkers, like Friedrich Nietzsche.

For Nietzsche, virtues like grace, mercy, and kindness are “merely an honorable form of stupidity.” Those who practice them simply “project their own honorable stupidity and goodness into the heart of things.” The “things” to which Nietzsche refers is the mystery of the universe—God, namely. A loving God is the work of fiction produced by the sentimental pining of a kind person. Our internal kindness simply gets reflected back onto the external world—next thing you know, there is a God willing to forgive sins. And it goes the other way around as well, if there is a kind God who shows mercy, then it’s incumbent upon his children to pass along such charity. (i.e. “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”)

“We others” says Nietzsche speaking on behalf of his fellow atheists, “we read something else into the heart of things: our own enigmatic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful, more mistrustful wisdom.” Just as the vitreous people live lives in harmony with external reality, so too does Nietzsche want harmony: if life is pointless, dark, and cold, the only meaning to be found is in what we make for ourselves, in what he calls our “will to power.”

Nietzsche pointed to particular men in history who exemplified such will—the Übermensch, the Superman. These men sacrificed, worked tirelessly, strove beyond their fellowmen to gain for themselves power, and with power purpose, and with purpose dignity, and with dignity worth. This is the path to meaning in such a worldview: advance yourself, beat others to the top of whatever hill you decide to climb, win at all costs.

You can start to see why Nietzsche had antipathy for the Christian ethic. The Apostle Paul gives the exact opposite instruction to the church at Philippi, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,” he says,” but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Rather than will to power, one almost expects Paul to coin the phrase, will to service. And why should we act in such a counterintuitive way? Paul answers by pointing to the life Jesus, our savior who “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

For Paul, selflessness isn’t a given, it isn’t born in a vacuum, it’s born in a manger. You see, at Christmas we celebrate the ultimate anti-Übermensch story: Jesus left the throne room of Heaven to be born in a cave as a poor refugee. As he grew older, he had no place to lay his head. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, he died, he was buried. His arduous journey was downward, from Heaven to Hell. He didn’t sacrifice himself so that he might gain power, he sacrificed his power so that he might give to others—meaning, purpose, dignity, all the things Nietzsche tried to make for himself but couldn’t. Nietzsche’s “God is dead” creed can never inspire the generosity that Nicaea’s “God is alive and coming back” creed can.

In my estimation, Nietzsche’s worldview makes perfect since if we do indeed live in a godless world. If there is no God, we’re left to strive, take, and conquer our neighbors. To find significance we have to look inward. But if the Christmas message is true, then by looking outside of ourselves, to the person and work of Christ, the Christmas spirit—joy, peace, mercy—is available to us year-round. Because he was denied a room in the inn, we can live lives of radical hospitality. Because our worth isn’t found in what we take, we’re free to give—gifts to our friends and family, and coffee to strangers behind us at a Starbucks drive thru. The Christmas spirit is incomprehensible apart from the Christmas story.

Dustin Messer is Sr. Fellow of Theology at the Center for Cultural Leadership. He and his wife Whitney live in Carrollton, TX where Dustin teaches at Legacy Christian Academy and serves on the preaching team at Christ Church (PCA). Before starting his doctoral work at La Salle University, Dustin graduated from Boyce College and Covenant Theological Seminary.

]]>Open Occultism and Millennial Magikhttp://truthxchange.com/2017/12/open-occultism-millennial-magik/
Sat, 09 Dec 2017 15:24:52 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7652The more things change, the more they stay the same. With each passing generation, this cliché takes on deeper levels of truth. Many have noted just how different the so-called millennial generation (the 18-30 demographic) is from the generations that came before them: their lack of respect for authority, their obsession with entertainment, and their […]

]]>The more things change, the more they stay the same. With each passing generation, this cliché takes on deeper levels of truth. Many have noted just how different the so-called millennial generation (the 18-30 demographic) is from the generations that came before them: their lack of respect for authority, their obsession with entertainment, and their penchant for social media. Yet, for all these differences (and many of them are greatly exaggerated), one thing has remained consistent. The millennial generation is as much under the spiritual attack of paganism as every generation reaching as far back as the Garden of Eden.

Now, I can imagine that some may read those last few sentences with a jaundiced eye. Maybe I’m simply being a Pollyanna, a conservative alarmist warning the masses that the bad people are “coming for your children.” The fact is I’m also skeptical of fanciful claims with a conspiratorial bend. But it appears paganism, and by this I mean “out-and-proud” occultism is making a comeback among young people, and is backed with all the promotional punch of the Internet, social media, and Youtube.

A number of recent articles have recently acknowledged that a kind of spiritual awakening is taking place among millennials. Back in 2005 Catherine Edwards Sanders wrote Wicca’s Charm: Understanding the Spiritual Hunger Behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality[1]. There she defines Wicca as,

monistic and pantheistic beliefs that all living things are of equal value. … Humans have no special place, nor are they made in God’s image. … Wiccans believe that they possess divine power within themselves and that they are gods and goddesses. …Consciousness can and should be altered through rite and ritual.[2]

These beliefs are not unique to Wicca, though it does appear that witchcraft is the predominant form of the Oneist resurgence among millennials. Parties on all sides of the worldview spectrum increasingly recognize the trend. Jason, Mankey has authored a piece titled, “Why Millennials Love Paganism,”[3] and Alden Wicker, in his article, “Witchcraft is the perfect religion for liberal millennials”[4] remarks that“ modern witchcraft [is] a movement that is being propelled out of the forest and into the mainstream.” He continues,

Search Meetup and you’ll find dozens of spell-casting covens in your area. The hashtag #witchesofinstagram brings up more than 360,000 posts from practitioners like @TheHoodWitch, who posts pictures of her long, lacquered nails hovering over tarot cards; @witcheryway, a Canadian witch who sells spell kits and incense burners out of her shop, and @light_witch, a self-described feminist in New England who spends her time swanning through outdoor landscapes in capes.

Bri Luna, the “Hoodwitch,” is the founder of the website thehoodwitch.com. The site promotes “everyday magic for the modern mystic.” It has been featured in Vogue Magazine, The Huffington Post, and the New York Times. She has even been featured on the popular Youtube channel Mitú, “a digital media company that brings a Latino [point of view] to mainstream entertainment across multiple platforms.” Luna fully embraces Brujeria, a Spanish-America word for witchcraft. In the video clip she says, “Being a bruja [witch] is not about becoming, it is about already acknowledging what is already existing within you”[5]

More and more millennials are moving away from both traditional Christianity and secularism. John Paul Ferguson writes, “As millennials continue to leave traditional Christian religions, interest in Wiccan and pagan practices have seen increased interest in recent years, a trend also spotted among young people and on college campuses.”[6]

College campuses in particular are fertile breeding grounds for open occultism among millennials. Back in 2010, Syracuse University appointed its very first “Pagan Chaplain” of Hendricks Chapel, an interdenominational place of worship. Further Sarah Sloat highlights the links between increasing liberal collegial causes and paganism.[7] Kari Paul, explains,

half of young adults in the U.S. believe astrology is a science. Compared to less than 8% of the Chinese public. The psychic services industry — which includes astrology, aura reading, mediumship, tarot-card reading and palmistry, among other metaphysical services — grew 2% between 2011 and 2016. It is now worth $2 billion annually, according to industry analysis firm IBIS World.[8]

This is no alarmist fad. The signs are clear for those with eyes to see. Millennials are our future. If paganism can take root among them it will firmly establish occultism for the foreseeable future among a generation that has never known the vestiges of a Christianized America. The mission field is ripe for harvest. Christians must take a zeal for the truth, seasoned with empathy and love, to these beloved image-bearers who have experienced the disappointing emptiness of secularism’s false promises.

]]>Our Pagan Childrenhttp://truthxchange.com/2017/12/our-pagan-children/
Fri, 08 Dec 2017 01:04:51 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7643“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). For centuries, this biblical wisdom has reassured Christian parents—until now. Our culture is pushing an increasingly pagan worldview on our Christian children. About 75% of evangelical children abandon their faith after a […]

]]>“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). For centuries, this biblical wisdom has reassured Christian parents—until now. Our culture is pushing an increasingly pagan worldview on our Christian children. About 75% of evangelical children abandon their faith after a year or two of college. But college-age men and women should at least know enough to resist! It gets worse: our young, tender little ones are now on the front lines.

Grade-school and pre-school boys and girls face a massive brainwashing assault that tells them there are no gender distinctions. One Texas school authority ordered teachers to cease referring to a child as a “boy” or a “girl.” Such terms lead to judgmental thinking and discrimination! This phenomenon is happening all over the Western, once Christian, world. One reason given in the UK is that the term “girls” can make them think they have to do everything perfectly, which can “create a lot of anxiety” in children and teenagers.

A few years ago we were told that homosexuals only wanted the right to be themselves in the privacy of their own homes. Now the demand includes legally-enforced affirmations of the gay agenda, taught in schools. Our children are not protected. A few days ago, a close Christian friend told us that his four-year old son was being kissed by another four-year old boy at school. The classmate’s behavior was no doubt influenced by that of his “two daddies.” In a Swedish book for toddlers and preschoolers entitled Hästen & Husse, a transgender man puts on lipstick and women’s clothes and lives with a confused pet horse that thinks it’s a dog. This book teaches preschoolers the “noble” message that transgenderism is normal and that they can “be who they want to be.” The author, Susanne Pelger, (PhD in genetics and biology), asks children if men can wear dresses and lipstick, and the children answer “Yes! You are as you are. That’s when you’re the best.” According to child psychiatrist Louise Frisén, the number of Swedish children wanting to be transgender has been rising by 100 per cent each year. She writes a blog, “Save my Sweden.” A Canadian could equally write, “Save my Canada,” since the Ontario government threatens to remove children from “abusive” parents who do not allow them to transition. In San Francisco, a summer camp that centers around transgender children announced it would accept children as young as four.

The arguments for alternate sexualities are endlessly modifiable. We hear that gender can be what we want it to be; we can eliminate traditional “obligatory sexualities and sex roles” to create “an androgynous and genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love.”

This thesis is powerfully expressed by postmodern feminist, Judith Butler.[1] In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) and Undoing Gender (2004), Butler sees gender as “performativity theory.” Being a woman or man is not something one is but something one decides to do. There is no divine creation; only self-creation. Transgender is helpful to this theory because it contends that biology can be manipulated to fit one’s chosen gender. It used to be that homosexuals claimed they were born that way. Now, self-created hyper-sexualization is the ultimate argument used to destroy Western God-fearing culture. By deconstructing sexuality, man is remade in the image of the genderless, impersonal state and God is nowhere.

But there is another view of sexuality and even kids “get it.” I have been moved to see school children get hold of the big picture on sexuality. It’s not hard—like the little boy who spoke up to say, “The Emperor has no clothes!” our children can understand and say what Genesis 1:27 tells us: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” This binary (Twoist) description of our sexuality is an easy and obvious truth for our children. The two genders are not “one.” People will not succeed in creating their own identity. The image of God in male and female is our true identity, given to us by God. The image of the personal Trinitarian God who is both one and many is given both to male and female, and explains their differences as well as their “one flesh” unity. This is why God in Genesis 1:18 pronounced the separations in creation “very good.”

The Bible’s view of sexuality is not small-minded moralism, unloving discrimination, heartless violence, or cruel bullying. It is a theistic understanding of the universe, deeply founded on the personal being of God Himself. This is ground zero for everyone. Homosexuality, lesbianism and transgender are “unnatural,” (Rom 1:26) and out of order with the physical cosmos. They are a rejection of the natural world and of God, who is the moral judge and the intelligent, ordering Creator of all things.

Just as the three persons of the Trinity must be kept separate in identity and function, so the man and the woman cannot forsake their specific sexual identities to merge into an androgynous being (the goal of paganism). Their ultimate human dignity reflects the person of God the Creator.

In maintaining these creation structures, we also reflect the image of God, revealed in Jesus, the definitive revelation of the image of God in human form. “There is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6 ESV). Jesus says: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In this one human being we see the deep essence of the transcendent God of creation as He is: a loving Creator and Redeemer. In his incarnation, Jesus reveals the eternal, unfathomable, mysterious God, making him accessible to human beings. In his birth, life, atoning death, resurrection and ascension, Jesus is the heart of the Gospel, the good news that God the Creator and Law-Giver is also the Savior. Jesus is the supreme expression to fallen humanity of God’s love. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

In our restless search for identity, we need to meet Jesus, the true source of human identity, the revelation of God in human form. Only he can keep our kids from paganism.

[1] Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (Gallimard, 1949, 2004): “One is not born a woman; one becomes one.”

]]>Giving Tuesdayhttp://truthxchange.com/2017/11/giving-tuesday-2/
Tue, 28 Nov 2017 14:37:49 +0000http://truthxchange.com/?p=7627If “Black Friday” is all about getting, “Giving Tuesday” is all about–giving. In a ministry like ours we get lots of satisfaction from giving. We give people a deep but simple understanding of life and the gospel in a confusing neo-pagan culture. To honor God we must remember that the Creator and the creation cannot […]

]]>If “Black Friday” is all about getting, “Giving Tuesday” is all about–giving. In a ministry like ours we get lots of satisfaction from giving. We give people a deep but simple understanding of life and the gospel in a confusing neo-pagan culture. To honor God we must remember that the Creator and the creation cannot be confused, even though, in a mysterious way, they are connected in a personal relationship through the life and death of Jesus. That is the greatest of all gifts.

Every day we are called to give others this deep wisdom of Twoism, both in the US and abroad. We were blessed this year to be able to take this message:

In January to theological students in Yucatan, Mexico and to graduate students in Westminster, California;

In February and May to the church in South Korea;

In August-November to pastors in Iowa, Mexico, Florida, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania;

And every day through out the year to those who received our podcasts, articles, videos and other materials or who attended a church seminar.

This message is wonderfully simplifying and liberating. Many of you are also givers to and supporters of our passionate calling because you have seen the importance of honoring God this way.

So please let this “Giving Tuesday” be a reminder that your giving keeps us going–to keep on giving!